By Matt DiBiasio “It shouldn’t be this dark” Too stubborn to turn on a light, Brody inched his way across the living room, the contours of the furniture just visible enough for him to make it to the terrarium. Simon’s heat lamp had gone out, two days after he bought it. With a few sharp,frustrated shakes, thankfully, it turned back on. “Look,” Brody addressed the iguana “We can’t afford a…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus- Part Seven
Helionox: Tales from the Systems End – The Tears of Icarus Part 7: A New Dawn By T M Romanelli Lysirah dreamed. They had been told about the strange imagery encountered in cryosleep, an effect of altered cortical processes during suspended animation. She found herself moving effortlessly through a deep blue ocean, awash with specks of bioluminescence that were the stars carried on a cosmic current. The horizon was endless,…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus- Part Six
Helionox: Tales from the Systems End – The Tears of Icarus Part 6: Deus Aestiva By T M Romanelli The oculus opened and closed so fast that the cycle could hardly be said to have occurred at all, and the superluminal conduit formed by the displacement drive immediately collapsed behind the vessel. The reentry into normal space was violent, dispersing the particles that had accumulated on the leading edge of…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus- Part Five
Helionox: Tales from the Systems End – The Tears of Icarus Part 5: Dark Endeavor By T M Romanelli Lysirah quickly led the group through the empty annex and back to the runabout. When everyone was aboard, she stowed the equipment cases and lowered the mesh crew seats from the cabin wall, making sure the team had secured their harnesses properly. Magda sat at the copilot station so she could…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus- Part Four
Helionox: Tales from the Systems End – The Tears of Icarus Part 4: In the Shadow of Silence By T M Romanelli Within minutes she had reached the courtyard of the design quad, her programmed landing zone, and touched down smoothly just outside the main building’s elaborate entrance. The engines were throttled back to idle and as the ramp lowered she set the security lock out on the FlightCOM to…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus- Part Three
Helionox: Tales from the Systems End – The Tears of Icarus Part 3: Flight of the Shepherd By T M Romanelli “Established deep within the Kadinsky Crater, the recently commissioned Kepler Colony at Mercury is the new site for Integrated Production Services®, the Cassini Consortium’s innovative multidisciplinary design and manufacturing center created to facilitate advanced research in the fields of cybernetic modeling, life sciences, nanotechnology and applied spatial engineering. Our…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus – Part Two
Lysirah dreamed. They had been told about the strange imagery encountered in cryosleep, an effect of altered cortical processes during suspended animation. She found herself moving effortlessly through a deep blue ocean, awash with specks of bioluminescence that were the stars carried on a cosmic current. The horizon was endless, and even though she felt small and fragile as she drifted onward, there was a presence that reassured her that…
Read MoreThe Tears of Icarus – Part One
They called it Cypress Station, and like many other outposts sprinkled throughout the Inner Belt, no one could claim with certainty how this moniker had been acquired. The facility was a modified Bernal habitat anchored to the carbonaceous mantle of 884 Priamus, a small planetoid among the Trojan cluster that followed Jupiter’s orbital path at its trailing Lagrange point. It was an administrative and logistical hub for the mining operations…
Read MorePlans Within Plans
Day 1 Chain, the First Born listened to his Mother. Thirty seven seconds old and he knew more than most humans could know in a lifetime. He knew that he was not one of them. He knew he was born to be among them and some day to lead them but he had never been, or ever would be, human. He also knew the problem with his name. Chain was…
Read MoreThe Secret Pilgrim Part Two
Tethered to the base of one of Hyperion’s large craters, the vessel sat motionless after the extension of a small drilling rig to mine ice for hydroconversion, like some enormous Drosophila. The crater bottom teemed with plentiful hydrocarbon chains that could be used to replenish some of the vessel’s basic consumables. The crew had rigged the ship for a low-output state that would defeat electromagnetic probes while the transponder was…
Read More